"Was Trump's El Paso Visit a Turning Point?"

Opinion by Richard Parker, reprinted from the New York Times.

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"EL PASO — If consoling the nation in a time of desperate need is a vital and yet simple task of the American presidency, Donald J. Trump failed miserably this week.

"From his flight on Wednesday to Dayton, Ohio, to this sprawling high-desert city on the Mexican border, the 45th occupant of the White House not only littered his consolation tour with petty insults — but just to rub salt in the wound, doses of renewed racism. Yet most striking was how alone and outnumbered the president was: rejected, ostracized and told to go home.

"The people who streamed the scene of the terrorist attack here — brown, black, white and every hue in between — defiantly defended the nation’s diversity. With no public appearances, the president seemed to shrink, ever more alone as he clung to his white nationalist politics and governance. But he and his supporters were grossly outnumbered. For perhaps the first time in his angry, racist and cruel presidency, the tables were turned in smoldering, righteous popular anger — and he was on the receiving end.

"You have to give this to Mr. Trump: He never backs off. He doubles down like a wild gambler in a casino, raising the stakes one more time demanding just a few more chips from the house. Leaving the White House on Wednesday morning, he said, 'I think my rhetoric brings people together,' adding he was 'concerned about the rise of any group of hate. I don’t like it, whether it’s white supremacy, whether it’s any other kind of supremacy.'

"As if there was some other kind of violent political ideology that has killed people — blacks and whites, Jews and Latinos — from Charlottesville, Va., to Pittsburgh, Dayton and El Paso. Leaving Dayton, Mr. Trump insulted the mayor and a senator from the safety of Air Force One and, of course, Twitter.

"Trump even jabbed a racist poke at El Paso, ridiculing the former Democratic Representative Beto O’Rourke’s Spanish first name, though he is of Anglo descent: [Trump tweeted:]   'Beto (phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage) O’Rourke, who is embarrassed by my last visit to the Great State of Texas, where I trounced him, and is now even more embarrassed polling at 1% in the Democratic Primary, should respect the victims and law enforcement — and be quiet!'

"While it was bad manners for a nation in mourning, it was more than that: It was a fresh dose of racism. In an era in which minorities are becoming majorities, as in Texas, and intermarrying with Anglos, who is Mr. Trump to judge people’s race and ethnicity based on their names? My last name is Anglo, but I am the son of a Mexican immigrant.

"At the makeshift memorial to the 22 killed for the hue of their skin while shopping at a Walmart on a Saturday, I spoke with a young soldier from the 1st Armored Division at nearby Fort Bliss. Big and burly in his camouflage uniform, Pvt. First Class Richard Riley, 20, stood with arms crossed, staring silently at the piles of flowers, plastic hearts and white crosses, one for every victim.

"But behind his dark glasses, his eyes welled up. 'I just can’t believe it,' he said. 'I’m Hispanic, too. And I can’t believe that these people were killed because they were.'

"In the dark hours after the attack, fear swept over my hometown. Lightning flashed on the horizon, illuminating empty streets and parking lots. Bars and restaurants shuttered their doors. Wherever I went, as I departed I heard this: 'Take care out there.' That was a phrase I’d never heard in this city in more than 50 years.

"Even at a public library, near the site of the attack, people openly advised each other to be careful, even exiting to the parking lot. . . .But in the human cycle of grief, the fear, disbelief and anxiety has transformed into a seething anger. El Paso is not a volatile, rioting city where the president could expect trouble. But he inevitably saw how alone he was in his toxic, racist politics, some throwback to a receding time in America.

"When Air Force One touched down, the temperature was soaring toward 104 degrees and just one single local official, Mayor Dee Margo, was there to greet him (Gov. Greg Abbott was there as well).

"Along the president’s route from the airport to a hospital, people lined the roads to greet him — largely with rejection. 'What’s more important?' Asked one man’s sign. 'Lives or re-election?'  American and Mexican flags sprouted together in the August heat. Signs with quotes bearing his name came back to haunt him: 'We cannot allow these people to invade our country.'  “Not Welcome' covered a stage at a park where people protested the president. The El Paso Times ran a black front page with this headline: 'Mr. President, We Are Hurting.'

"How people actually live here stands in stark contrast to Mr. Trump’s white nationalism, . . .  Six in 10 Americans here have family on the other side of the trickling Rio Grande, according to a study by the El Paso Community Foundation, while six in 10 Mexicans just across the border have family on the American side. . . .

"And what is usually forgotten is that racial violence in America has almost never been a two-way street. . . .  What whites have historically called 'race riots' have actually been one-sided assaults by whites: . . .

"As if to symbolize just how out of touch Trumpism is here and in much of America, a sole woman approached the makeshift memorial at the Walmart where 22 people died. She wore a bright red MAGA hat, and quickly over 30 people surrounded her chanting: 'Take it off! Take it off!' She refused, yelling back that the president should be accepted here — only to be drowned out. Later, young people appeared, dressed in black, chanting: 'white violence, White House.'

"Something is shifting. Mr. Trump may not have felt it during his few hours in town, but walking around, you couldn’t miss it. The El Paso massacre brought together the most active of America’s shifting tectonic plates: racism, assault weapons, a national Latino population of 60 million now with a target on its back, Mr. Trump’s white nationalism and his awful manners for a country in mourning.

"Another president might have been sensitive enough to sense the shift, and changed course accordingly — played the convener, the unifier. Instead, Mr. Trump displayed just how small he is, no matter how big his mouth or powerful his office. He never once appeared in public. By 6:01 p.m., after just a little more than two hours, he was safely aboard Air Force One again and it was wheels up into the sky. But he is a shrinking president, stuck in a racist past, flying over a changing America. And I think we — or most of us — are all El Paso now."

Richard Parker is the author of “Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America.”

"How Trump Campaign Uses Facebook Ads" - New York Times

The shooter in the El Paso massacre posted a manifesto minutes before he began his shooting rampage.   In it, he declares that "this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas."

From an article by Thomas Kaplan in the New York Times, we are told that President Donald Trump's re-election campaign "has harnessed Facebook advertising to push the idea of an 'invasion' at the southern border, amplifying the fear-inducing language about immigrants that he has also voiced at campaign rallies and on Twitter."

Kaplan goes on to explain that, since January, the Trump campaign has posted more than 2,000 ads on Facebook that include the word "invasion."   This is part of an advertising barrage by the campaign that focuses on immigration, with special emphasis on the word "invasion."

We cannot prove that the El Paso shooter was influenced by Trump's rhetoric and his Facebook ads, but it is a striking coincidence, if it is not in fact connected.

Kaplan says that since late March, the Trump re-election campaign has spent an estimated $1.25 million on Facebook ads about immigration.   Many of these ads begin with what Kaplan calls "a blunt message" -- "We have an INVASION! . . . It's CRITICAL that we STOP THE INVASION."

When the Trump campaign first announced that Brad Parscale would be the 2020 campaign manager, I was at first puzzled, because Parscale has no experience as a campaign strategist or manager.   He was the digital data guru for the 2016 Trump campaign.    And then it hit me -- and since then I have been worried and sickened.

Because what this suggests -- and now seems to confirm -- is that the Trump campaign is copying the Russian playbook of flooding social media with disinformation, targeted to specific, susceptible audiences.

What makes this even more worrisome is the fact that our laws are very restrictive when it comes to domestic terrorism, because they are limited by our free speech laws.  What they are doing is probably not illegal.  In addition, there is some evidence, according to MSNBC reporting, that the Trump administration has drastically cut the budget for the analysts who could deal with this threat from domestic terrorists.   But, if it's not illegal, what could they do anyway?

Is this simply political advertising, using all modern techniques of data mining, targeted messages for specific audiences identified by demographics and interest data collected over time?    Is there anything illegal about that?

Well, what if it's the equivalent of shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater?    There are limits to free speech, so say the courts.

Ralph

Trump: "Hate has no place in our country"

Yes, folks, that's what the president said in his first public statement following the back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio that, combined, left 29 people dead and 57 wounded.

"Hate has no place in our country."

This is the same man who unabashedly holds political rallies with his rabid base of haters, who this same president excites with his rhetoric that is based on hatred and the stoking of hatred for those who -- they want to believe -- are not part of us, but outsiders.

What else does President Trump mean when he refers to the "infestation" -- a word he loves to use at his rallies -- that is coming into our country?   And then, reportedly, one of the shooters in this latest, awful, twin mass shooting said he wanted to kill as many Mexicans as possible.

How are the two not connected?

No, Donald Trump did not pull the trigger.   But he told his base, in effect, that these are people to be hated.   It's OK to hate them;  you're justified.  What after all do you do with an infestation?   You try to get rid of it, don't you?

Just saying, with wife Melania standing mutely by his side, that hate has no place in this country --  does not make it so.    He lies about everything.

Why would we expect anything else from him?    If the legal processes do not get rid of him prior to November 2020, he must be defeated at the polls -- by a landslide.

By a landslide.  Because it's not just Donald Trump we want to replace in the presidency.  It's the stench and taint he has brought to besmirch our democracy and our inclusiveness and our optimism that must be expunged.

Kirsten Gillibrand is far from my favorite candidate for the Democratic nomination;  but in the recent debate, she had a good line.   She said her first act as president would be to Clorox the Oval Office.

Amen.

Ralph

The economy may not save Trump, because he makes people feel bad, not good.

Here's in interesting perspective on "It's the economy, stupid" from Frida Ghitis for CNN:

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"Contrary to the famous adage from Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, it's not the economy, stupid.  It's happiness and overall well-being.

"And even though President Donald Trump is running for re-election during an economic boom (never mind the trillion-dollar deficit fueling it) Democrats are wrong to fear that a strong economy could doom their prospects. That's because it turns out that voters actually care about other things besides money.

"Sure, money matters a lot. But a growing body of research suggests that other things may count more. In particular, it appears that we care greatly about our well-being, which includes income and retirement accounts but also a wide variety of other factors.

"One of the features of the Trump era is exhaustion with the acrimony that has engulfed America. How many times have we heard people plead that they need a break – from the shocking news, from the unceasing attacks, from the bitterness that has ended friendships, sparked social media ruthlessness and toxicity, and generally produced a permanent state of medium-grade national anxiety. That is true among Democrats, but many independents and Republicans share the distress.

"It all adds up to a national miasma that drains many people's daily sense of well-being no matter how much the economy grows. And that, the research – and common sense – suggests, could spell the president's downfall.

"Multiple studies point to a similar conclusion. The economist Federica Liberini and her colleagues found that subjective well-being can have an impact almost 10 times larger than family income on support for a political incumbent.

"Separately, George Ward at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found similar results. Looking at polling and election results in 15 European countries over 40 years, he noted that economic growth was an important factor. But a measure of 'life satisfaction' had a greater impact on voting behavior. Life satisfaction, he concluded, was 'twice as important in explaining how incumbents did as the unemployment rate and about 30 percent more important than GDP growth.' . . .

"Remember Ronald Reagan's famous question to voters during a 1980 debate with incumbent Jimmy Carter? Reagan asked Americans, 'Are you better off than you were four years ago?' Perhaps he was only referring to the economy. But America was not a particularly happy place at the time. Carter came to be associated with a national 'malaise.' Reagan encouraged voters to gaze optimistically toward a mythical shining city on a hill.

"Four years later, Reagan was re-elected in a spectacular landslide, even though GDP growth under Reagan was only slightly higher than under Carter.  That vote reflected more an amorphous sense of optimism under Reagan.

"When Americans turn their attention more fully to the 2020 election, voters will be interested in candidate proposals about health insurance, student debt, and the like. But the way to a Democratic victory is more likely one that also promises an end to the awful feeling that now pervades much of the country. That sense of constant war against each other. That floating dread about how far this will go.

"Americans have endured more than two years of ugly stories from Washington; stories of corruption, of conflicts of interest, of payments to adult-film stars, of secret meetings with Russians, of Cabinet members that resign or are fired amid ugly scandals, of collapsing global approval for America's leadership, of shocking tweets day after day after day after day. . . .

"Research shows that Americans are less happy than when Trump took office, even if the stock market is at record highs. The UN World Happiness Report ranked the United States at No. 15 for 2012 to 2014. It dropped to 19 for 2016-2018, and its overall score fell, so it wasn't just that others did better. Americans simply are less happy than they used to be. . . .

"To win, Democrats must remind voters of the true promise of America, a country of people who have come together and built a great nation founded on lofty ideals that have inspired the world. They have to persuade voters they will restore a sense of optimism and bring an end to the exhausting, embarrassing era of Trump mayhem."

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This runs the risk of sounding like the mindless "forget your troubles and just be happy."    But it's not.   I can relate totally to that sense of exhaustion and draining miasma -- no matter how good the economic news.   Besides, the claims are backed by data and research analysis.

Ralph